EXHIBITED WORKS
Tall Gallery, Warehouse 17, La Fuerza Compound
Old Pain
by Lyra Garcellano
September 9 to 30, 2009
In this exhibit, men and women are depicted lying on the floor, their limbs splayed out, their skin as white as paper. Their pose of surrender looks total and unrehearsed, as though gravity, or some other force, had triumphed in claiming the bodies. As veritable snapshots of terrible conclusions, the paintings are haunted by a particular nakedness of emotion that even old pain, in this kind of inevitable collapse, is contantly reawakened.
“Old pain is like an anchor. Useless. … We’re all human, and we make errors. We have to move on.” -- From “The Compass” by Tammy Kling and John Spencer Ellis
When old pain hits, paralysis reigns triumphant. Old ghosts come back to haunt and one is rendered vulnerable again to the perils of decentering.
Lyra Garcellano’s latest works attempt to come to terms with the feeling of losing control and succumbing to a literal gravitational force. But there is a suggestion of victory after the fall, a shedding of deadweight that hints of a future phoenix.
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